It has been a while since we last tested Gigabyte graphics accelerators in our lab. Today we got a great opportunity to look at the new solutions from this manufacturer based on ATI Radeon X1900 XTX and Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

We didn’t test this game in FSAA modes because it disables HDR on Nvidia’s GeForce cards in this case, making the image much less beautiful. Moreover, HDR is incompatible with the Bloom effect. TES IV: Oblivion doesn’t offer integrated benchmark options, so we had to test it manually with the Fraps utility; the numbers may be a little inaccurate as a consequence.

In dungeons and closed environments in general it is important that the graphics card be able to effectively process pixel shaders as well as lighting and shadowing. The advantages of the Radeon X1900 architecture show up in a rather peculiar way here: the average performance of the Gigabyte Radeon X1900 XTX differs but slightly from that of the Gigabyte GeForce 7900 GTX, but the Radeon has a considerably higher minimum of speed! It means the game is going to run smoother on the ATI-based card, giving you more playing comfort.

Considering Oblivion is not all about closed environments, we recommend you using a resolution lower than 1600x1200 even on flagships products from Nvidia and ATI to safeguard yourself against slowdowns.

The Gigabyte GeForce 7900 GTX is a little faster than the Gigabyte Radeon X1900 XTX on average, but has a much worse min speed (less than 20fps even in 1024x768). In other words, you can’t avoid the game’s slowing down in complex scenes on this graphics card. Thus, the Radeon X1900 XTX remains the best graphics card available to play TES IV.